Without a doubt, a newborn and infant will feed at its own schedule. This child cries until it is fed. The problem is that often, a parent is required to go downstairs (or elsewhere) and remove pre-prepared milk from the cooler (e.g., refrigerator) or prepare it from scratch, heat it, and then come upstairs, all while the child cries. Most parents recognize that the time spent making up the bottle is agonizing for the parent and the child. Any invention that minimizes the time interval between the child awakening and being fed would be greatly received. The first problem, therefore, is simply the need to avoid making trips to other rooms at night.
In addition, given the increasing cost of formula or the difficulty in obtaining breast milk by mothers who pump, it is desirable to save as much unused milk as possible. At the end of the feeding, any unused milk must be returned to the refrigerator otherwise it will spoil. The second problem, therefore, is to save formula or precious breast milk to avoid the need to later pump additional milk to compensate for that lost milk. The time saved by not having to pump is significant and also reduces the pain associated with pumping.
Most parents understand that the child will awake during the night many times. It is no wonder that many jokes are made about midnight or three a.m. feedings. This recognizes an important, but surprisingly overlooked characteristic; namely that children tend to be on a schedule. Accordingly, rather than trying to fight the nighttime feeding, the parent can work with the child's schedule. This is especially important if there is a primary care giver and the primary breadwinner in the same room, such that prolonged crying disrupts the breadwinner. The third problem, therefore, is not having a bottle ready even though a parent will precisely know when the baby will awake and cry for milk.
In addition, the fourth problem involves traveling. Traveling poses unique problems for the parents and the children. In automobile travel, it is nearly impossible to adequately transport milk because of cooling and then subsequent heating problems. Similarly, in overnight lodgings, often times the lodgings are not equipped with ovens, microwave ovens, refrigerators, etc. and accordingly portable devices that can substitute for cooling and heating units would be well received. In this regard, the unit can come equipped for car lighter adapters to provide electronic cooling/heating during long travels. Hotels can benefit from additional revenue, not by increasing the room rate, but by renting out the unit to guests in the same manner that extra cots, media games, or high-tech accessories are available for rent.
Partial solutions exist to some of the above-identified problems. But they fail in most respects. Some devices include flash warmers that heat a bottle quickly. Flash warmers, however, require removal of the bottle from the refrigerator. This definitely means a midnight trip to the refrigerator. Accordingly, even though flash warmers may reduce the time spent warming the bottle versus using a traditional stovetop method or the more dangerous microwave oven method, it still does not solve a problem associated with cooling a bottle or having a cooled bottle immediately on hand. Most importantly, though, the flash warmer cannot be adapted to have a bottle ready for when the child awakes. And yet another problem with flash warmers is that there is no way to transport it in the car for long trips. The travel requirement relegates the parent to carrying separate bottle bags, usually with freezable gel packs.
One of the problems with flash warmers is that there is no way to keep the bottle cool during the night. Trips to the refrigerator are standard procedures. Given the child's generally consistent sleep schedule, flash warmers are no use even if the child is scheduled. This is because flash warmers cannot turn on or off as a function of time. Flash warmers simply turn on when manually activated by the parent. A bottle cannot be set into the warmer overnight because the milk is left unrefrigerated and it will spoil. Accordingly, flash warmers have no timers to provide for automated warming or cooling.
Other devices discuss having separate warming and cooling compartments. For those units that purportedly are day-night warmers (also known as dusk to dawn units), these warmers are not timed and nor are they self-contained units. Human intervention is still required to manually move the bottle from the cooling portion to the heat portion. In use, these units generally require the following steps: freeze the gel pack ahead of time, prepare milk in the bottle, insert the bottle into the cold compartment alongside the frozen gel pack, remove the bottle when child awakens, insert the bottle into the warming compartment, manually activate the warmer, and finally remove bottle when warm.
As the frozen gel pack thaws during the night, it becomes incapable of maintaining a cold enough temperature to safely store unused milk as that milk will be hot when it is returned to the cold compartment and that hot milk must return to safe temperatures. Again, another trip the refrigerator may be necessary in the night to return unused milk. Accordingly, whilst the parent may save a trip to the refrigerator at the beginning of the feeding cycle, another trip will likely be required at the end of the cycle. Plainly, the dusk to dawn warmers fail to solve most of the problems associated with nighttime feedings. In addition, the cooling unit is simply a freezeable gel pack that must be removed each morning, frozen, and replaced into the unit each night. Therefore, if the parent forgets to remove it in the morning, no gel pack is available for that night and the unit is useless for that night. None of these units can be timer activated because the heating and cooling compartments are separate.
The other problem with flash warmers or other dusk to dawn warmers/coolers is that there is no uniform heating/cooling or temperature modulation to maintain constancy. Thus it is hard to maintain thermoequilibrium.